A Talking Astor Place Cube, Queer Vloggers, and More Performance Picks

F*@#d in the East VillageJanuary 11-17 at The Wild Project, 7:30 pm: $20, $16 students/seniors.

The East Village isn’t what it used to be, I think we all know that. Samantha Fontana and Roger Manix especially do, so much that they’ve crafted a comedic play all about it. F*@#d in the East Village is one of those plays where two people play many characters, but in this case the show begins with only two people: a “recently dumped high school senior” who meets “her twentysomething gay man self in 2005.” Now that that pattern of logic has been established, the audience will go on a journey back in time to the East Village of the past, only it’s a little weirder and more surreal. Not in the sense of there being more avant-garde art spaces, but like, in the sense that the Astor Place Cube is granted the ability to speak. You know, just average stuff like that. Fontana is a born-and-bred East Villager, so this isn’t a mediation on “old New York” by people whose first interactions with the city included Duane Reades and Starbucks on every corner already.

The Fresh Tracks Showcase brings together five early career dance and movement artists who have been granted a residency at NYLA. In this showcase spanning two nights, each artist will be presenting a new piece they have created over the course of their residency. Participating artists include Ashley R.T. Yergens, Sophie Sotsky, Doug LeCours, Jessica Pretty, and Lily Bo Shapiro, who are showing pieces delving into topics and themes such as navigating a non-binary body in a public space, the “relationship between watching porn and pretending to be on vacation,” and “possibilities for blackness that are not palpable in real time.”

This new comedy musical, written by Sophie Zucker, Maya Sharma, and The Absurd Comedy Collective‘s Rachel Kaly, does not seem to be shying away from its title. No, that’s not just a funny spelling of “nervous.” The musical follows a group of girls who are sent to Nervosa, a “special place for special people who hate their bodies!” The show’s cheery and colorful exterior combined with its subject matter of eating disorders seems to make for an interesting and biting combination, one that will surely bring about cringes and laughs alike. And maybe even some emotion, who knows. It also seems like puppets are involved, which always makes for a fun twist. It will be running every Saturday through mid-February, so there are plenty chances to indulge.

Presented as part of The Exponential Festival (Brooklyn’s more experimental and “emerging” answer to APAP festival season), Gemini Stars centers on the unique opportunities that LGBTQ vloggers have carved out for themselves. That is, their platform and online presence allows them to be very open about their identity and reach a wide variety of people, even when their IRL reality might not be so welcoming. This creates an interesting and sometimes tragic dissonance, echoing how the internet has acted as a sanctuary of sorts for many marginalized people, especially young people. The show is created by Pioneers Go East Collective, a group that makes performance work involving music, acting, and documentary to tell stories of queerness and identity. Plus, it’s devised with help from the cast, it’s not just one person’s imagining of what this experience might be like.

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Bedford + Bowery is where downtown Manhattan and north Brooklyn intersect. Produced by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in collaboration with New York magazine, B + B covers the East Village, Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and beyond. Want to contribute? Send a tip? E-mail the editor.